Step By Step

Chapter One

The cupboard we were sat in was discreetly hidden, nobody would find us here. Sure, one might ask when stuck in a small cupboard with a complete stranger What if they kill me? I can't be the only one that thinks that, right? Well, under the circumstances I was thinking a bit more about the actual murderer on the loose rather than the 17-year-old boy next to me. The emergency alarm had gone off 5 minutes ago, it turns out the high school was the last stop on the murders killing spree. When I was sprinting to the cupboard where my friends and I had arranged to meet in the case of an emergency I happened to see another boy in my year attempting to get into the locked cupboard. I pulled the bobby pin out of my hair and fiddled with the lock until it finally unlocked, the boy began to thank me, but I covered his mouth with my hand and whispered, 'Shut up and get in the cupboard.' Covering my ears to drown out the screams of our fellow students, I wasn't close with very many people, we exchanged hello's in the hallway, but you could never trust anyone, it was high school after all, but never had I wanted this. We had been sat in the cupboard for what must have been an hour, I would've fallen asleep if I could've, but I was too focused on staying alive. I'd rather rely on the 4 cups of coffee I had consumed that morning to keep me up rather than risk falling asleep and not waking up. The screams had become fainter but still noticeable, they were each dying out until there was almost silence. The boy that was joining me in the cupboard was trying to make small talk, Like, I get it if you're stuck for long periods of time with a person you are going to want to have something to talk about. The more you talk, the more likely you are to be heard, the more likely you are to be found, the more likely you are to be killed. It took everything within me to have not turned around and yelled at the guy already, but my lack of sleep and current anxious mood had made it all the more difficult and just as I was about to yell at him, the power came back on. The thin yellow tinged light of our public-school hallway shone through the cupboards cracks lighting up the confined space as much as it could.

'That's it, he's gone now? We can leave?' the boy asked in a more hushed voice than before

'look, I don't know who you are but,' I began

'Theodore' he stated

'what?' I asked, I hadn't really listened to what he was saying I was more focused on my sentence.

'My name. It's Theodore.' He explained

'okay, Theodore, I'm Ivy. And in answer to your previous question yes, we can most probably go now but don't just waltz out there and expect everything to be fine. I doubt any of your friends or family are still alive out there. Good luck' I told him preparing him for the worst, it always helps me to think of the worst-case scenario that way anything better than that is a happy surprise.

'What do you mean good luck?' He questioned obviously agitated 'Aren't you coming with me? We need to stick together, but first we need to get out of this cupboard' 

I only just noticed that he was right, being alone wouldn't help me, it wouldn't help either of us. We were in this together now, whether I liked it or not. We also needed to get out of the small cramped cupboard into the light to see each other and assess the damage to analyse our next move. I pushed the doors open and stepped out into the bloody hall. When I pictured the hallway, I didn't expect what I saw. The walls had hand marks made from blood that looked like people had been clawing against them, bodies were strewn about the place. Clothes torn they laid like dolls, limbs in awkward positions, half of which shouldn't be possible, all were pale and cold many with red marks around their necks or bullets in their heads. These bodies, once the bodies of people as alive as I am, were now abandoned shells left to rot in the open, in high school of all places the place that teenagers dread but seeing everyone like this just showed that school was nothing compared to this disaster. Who will bury them and weep salty tears onto their grave? Who will send them away with love? Who will be there to care? Likely no-one at all. They will all decay like there is no meaning, the entire school rotting away. Before I could process what my body was doing I was slumped against the empty wooden cupboard that we had once used for refuge head in my hands, not crying but thinking. Thinking about how lucky I had been thinking not about how the student's parents would feel, they couldn't feel, they were gone too everyone in this small town was, I just knew it. I was however, thinking about how the mass murderer that orchestrated this could be so inhuman to cause this pain and torture to the amount of innocent people he had.